There are many physical locations where it is desired to limit or control access. Typically this is accomplished by providing keys and/or pass codes to authorized visitors. For example, a homeowner and related family members may all have keys to the doors of their home. Sometimes a non-resident might have a key for emergency purposes. In a commercial space, the tenants or occupants may have some combination of keys, pass cards, access codes, and the like to permit entry onto the premises. Such entry may be at all times or may be restricted to certain time periods.
Whether residential or commercial, there are many instances where visitors, vendors, support personnel, repair people, delivery people, emergency personnel, first responders, medical professionals, military, government, and the like will need access to the premises. In the prior art, access is controlled a number of ways.
At the home, access may require that a family member be home to receive a visitor or vendor, so that desired services can be provided. This can create many disadvantages, particularly where the visitor cannot commit to a specific time of day. (e.g. cable companies may schedule a delivery time from 8 in the morning till 4 in the afternoon, with no commitment as to when within that time period they will appear). There may be trusted visitors who may be permitted in the home even without the presence of family members, but providing access either requires a family member to be present, or to somehow hide a key outside the home for retrieval by the visitor. In other instances, a visitor may be arriving late at night, and the family members may desire to provide access without waking up. There is no current process that provides a useful solution to these dilemmas.
In a commercial space, there may be a security station that allows visitors to be signed in, checked against a list of authorized visitors, and provided escorted access to the premises. Such a system requires full time security personnel to be available during the times of expected access, an expensive proposition. In addition, a tenant may forget to inform the security desk that the visitor is authorized, requiring last minute communication to resolve such problems.
In other instances, it may be desirable to limit and control the accessibility of events, such as concerts, movies, plays, and the like, to valid entrants. In the prior art, this has been accomplished through the use of tickets or passes. The ticket represents a right of entry to a location or event. The user of tickets immediately gave rise to the use of counterfeit or fraudulent tickets. To combat this, printers have adopted techniques used in currency control, particularly to make counterfeiting more difficult and expensive, and to increase the ease with which counterfeit tickets can be detected.
Another problem with physical tickets is the possibility of multiple use of the tickets for the same event. A user might enter the venue of the event, and then somehow pass the ticket back to the outside so that another user can enter the premises. A typical way of combating such misuse is to remove, mark, pierce or otherwise alter the physical ticket so subsequent uses can be easily detected and prevented. In other cases, tickets are marked with a readable code so that, via a scanner, a real-time inventory of use can be created and second uses can be detected and denied. Such codes can be bar codes, QR codes or other two dimensional codes, and the like.
Another disadvantage of current ticket schemes is the prevalence of so called “scalping” or resale of the ticket by the original purchaser, such that the issuer of the ticket does not benefit from the subsequent resale of the ticket. There have been many approaches to prevent the purchase of tickets by those who do not actually desire to use the tickets, or to prevent the resale of the tickets by the original purchasers. Because present tickets are a bearer type of document, it has not been possible to provide systems to prevent resale.
The use of tickets or entrance rights is not limited to events. Tickets or other credentials are typically used for mass transit of many types, including buses, subways, trams, taxis, trains, light rail, air travel, sea travel, and the like. Each of these carriers has developed methods for confirming and providing the right to travel on a conveyance at a certain time, for a certain distance, in a certain direction. However, many of these methods have the same problem as described above. Further, the purchase of tickets, tokens, boarding passes, and the like often result in crowds and delays at the point of embarkation, causing frustration and inefficiency.